Case Study
Law Firm Website Design — VM Law Case Study
A WordPress site that took eight seconds to answer, replaced with a bespoke site that loads in one and opens by asking the visitor what has happened to them.
About VM Law
VM Law is Elizabeth Hunt, a solicitor of more than fifteen years and an accredited family mediator, working from Llantwit Major across the Vale of Glamorgan and beyond. She is a member of Resolution, which commits her to dealing with matters in a firm but non-confrontational way.
The practice covers family law — divorce, separation and arrangements for children — alongside private client work such as wills, probate and lasting powers of attorney, residential conveyancing, and civil and workplace mediation. Being both solicitor and mediator in one person is unusual, and it is the thing a client benefits from most: the same person can advise on the law or help two people reach an agreement without going to court.
The existing website was built in WordPress. It was not broken, but it was slow, thin and written about the firm rather than about the person reading it.
Nobody visits a law firm’s website on a good day
Someone looking for a family solicitor is separating, arguing about the children, buying a house under pressure or dealing with a death. They are not browsing. They want to know whether this person can help them and what happens next, and they want it in the first few seconds.
The old site opened with “Qualified As A Solicitor For Over 15 Years” over a stock photograph of a gavel. That is a credential, and credentials matter — but it answers a question nobody arrived with. Below it sat four identical scales-of-justice icons and 874 words for the whole home page.
Speed made it worse. Measured on the live site, a first visit waited 8.5 seconds for the server to answer and 13.3 seconds for the page to finish, pulling 4.3MB across 117 requests. Most people give up after three. The email address was written as liz[at]vmlaw.co.uk to hide it from spam robots, which also meant nobody could click it.
Start from what has happened to them
The new site opens with a single line — “Clear, practical advice from a solicitor who listens” — and then, beside it, a panel headed What’s happening for you? Seven routes, in the visitor’s own words rather than ours: we are separating or divorcing, we need to sort out arrangements for the children, we want to agree things without going to court, I am buying, selling or re-mortgaging a home, someone has died and I need to deal with their estate. Whoever you are, one of those is you, and it is one click to the page that answers it.
Behind that sit thirteen pages written properly — divorce, child arrangements, mediation, pre-nuptial agreements, wills, conveyancing and private client work each get a page of their own, with the process set out step by step. The home page alone went from 874 words to 2,196. That is not padding for Google; it is the answer to what somebody actually asks before they pick up the phone.
An AI assistant sits on the site day and night. A question at eleven at night gets an answer, and Liz gets the details in the morning. It is the same Mediatopia CMS every site we build runs on, so the practice can change its own wording without asking anyone.
What We Built
Project development work carried out
A Site That Asks First
“What’s happening for you?” — seven routes in the visitor’s own words, so somebody in the middle of a separation is one click from the page that answers them.
Thirteen Pages, Written Properly
Every service its own page with the process set out step by step. The home page went from 874 words to 2,196.
An AI Assistant, Day And Night
Questions answered at eleven at night, with the details waiting for Liz in the morning — built into the site, not a bolted-on widget.
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